The commission came from her boyfriend, who wanted it as a birthday gift for himself. She was twenty-five, and the boyfriend was eighty-three. He had made a fortune in local real estate and he managed all the concerts, plays, movie openings, and other events at the Orpheum Theatre. His name was Buddy Lessing. He knew everyone, and according to all the stories about him, he was tight as a drumhead. But evidently he was also cool. He had once smoked dope with Bob Dylan’s band. And last summer, within the compass of a single day, he walked on the high catwalk of the Duomo in Florence with a group of tourists, and then later helped thwart a bomb plot in the Frankfurt Airport by noticing a man leaving a bag next to a newspaper kiosk. He led a wild life. People liked him. Women liked him. At least initially. He had been married seven times. One day he ambled into Terry’s restaurant with three young men and saw a couple of the young man’s paintings hanging along the back wall. One was of Lena Shumaker in tender sunset hues, sitting at the edge of the river with the bridge to Arkansas in the background. The other was of Hemingway in his forties, leaning on a table, thick arms slightly spread, looking off to the right.
“Who did those? They’re very good.”
“I did,” said Shumaker. “That’s my mother.”
“Very nice.”
“And that’s Ernest Hemingway.”
“No shit, son.”
“Right.”
“I met the guy, you know. When I was a young man. In Cuba. Before Castro. I was a good newspaperman. Once. Back in the early Jurassic period. But I met him. Shook hands with him. Big barrel-chested fella with a limp handshake. But then maybe he was a little sauced.”
“Wow.” Shumaker had made the painting from a picture in a magazine article.
The man brought a billfold from his suit pocket and took out a photograph. “Think you can do me a painting of this girl?”
“Probably. Sure.”
“Beautiful, huh.”
“Yes.”
“Her name is Alexa. Would you say that’s a sexy name?”
“I would, yeah.”
“Alexa Jamison. So there’s whiskey in it, too.”
“Sir?”
“Jameson Irish whiskey, son.”
“Oh.”
“You think I’m cracked, don’t you.”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll pay you a hundred bucks.”
“Can’t do it for that, sir.”
“Kidding. Three hundred.”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll give you seven hundred more.”
Shumaker looked at him.
“No doubt you’ve heard I’m a money squeezer.”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Lessing seemed suddenly tired of the talk. He sighed. “Fifteen hundred. Not a penny more.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes sir, no sir. Somebody worked on you growing up. I don’t know that I like the result.”
The young man said nothing.
“Your parents still with us?”
He nodded.
“What do they do?”
“My father’s in the mathematics department at Memphis. My mother teaches English at Rhodes.”
Lessing grinned. “Pedigree.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, so we have a deal. One thing. I want a nude. Think you can do that? Think you can do it without wanting to put your hands on her? She’s gonna be my wife.”
The young man saw the blotches in the other’s skin, the sacks under the watery gray eyes. He said, “It’s a professional circumstance, sir. I’ve done them before.” In fact, he had done one, his junior year at Memphis, and the model was someone he knew from other classes, a friend, with ample Renaissance roundnesses from shoulders to hips, and there were nine other students in the room.
“So it would be routine for you.”
Shumaker looked at the picture. “Yes.”
“Somebody beautiful as this?”
“Well.”
“Trick question, kid. There’s nobody beautiful as this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right?”
Shumaker told him what he wanted to hear, and indeed the woman in the picture was beautiful.
—
THE EFFICIENCY APARTMENT had the one window in the door, and when Sonya came to visit him one morning he had made the joke that he saw the painting he could make of her framed there. He had been planning to do so, had made her stand in the window while he imagined it. He had even sketched her for it. And now he was going to do this other, Alexa Jamison, and it would be a nude.
The photograph did not do her justice.
She was astonishing. Shumaker felt that he understood the word beauty itself in a new way when he first saw her framed in the window, midmorning light on her blond hair like filamental fragments of the sun itself.
Young as she was, it turned out that she had been previously married and had a child who lived with her mother down in New Orleans. She told Shumaker this in that first meeting. She also claimed that she loved Buddy Lessing. “The most fascinating man,” she said. “He told me that of all his wives, except the first one, I’m the best.”
“Damn,” Shumaker said.
“Well, he’s honest. And I like that.”
“But—God. He ranks them?”
“I’m the next best. We don’t talk about the others.”
They went to Otherlands Coffee Bar, and she asked him about himself. It became something like a job interview. She had a contract Lessing had made up, that he wanted Shumaker to sign. The contract stipulated that the painting be finished by October 20. One month. He asked if it could be changed to read “on or about” that date, and she made the change. “I’ll get him to go along.” He saw the smooth skin of her hands, the bitten nails, which only added to the attractiveness, as if that plain little facet held her to the earth. He had never seen skin so flawless. Looking into her soft eyes, he was already thinking of combinations of color. Ocean water with turquoise depths.
“So,” she said. “Tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
“What time?”
“Morning? I have classes. And a job that takes up the late afternoons and evenings.”
“Morning it is,” she said.
Watching her drive away from the café, he thought of Sonya. He called her number, even though it wasn’t yet seven o’clock in LA. He got her message machine. “Missing you,” he said. “I know it’s early.”
The following morning, before light, he was up and readying himself. He had three stretched and primed canvases the size of windows, and he put one on the easel and set out the paints he would use and the other tools, the pencils and putty knives and brushes. He arranged everything supposing she would stand for the portrait. But when she arrived, smelling of flowers and bath salts, and immediately got out of her jeans and white blouse, she went to the unmade divan, and stretched out on her side.
“Um,” he said. “Is that—”
She sat up, leaned on one hand, and rested the other on her upper thigh, legs crossed demurely at the knees. “This is probably better. You don’t want me sitting at that table, do you?”
He was acutely aware of the little triangle of blond hair below her navel. “No.”
“This okay with you, then?” she asked.
“It’s good, sure.”
“I’m comfortable this way. I might fall asleep lying down.”
“No, that’s a perfect pose.”
Embarrassed, trembling a little, he took up a pencil and, as he did with every portrait, began lightly sketching.
Through that first hour, he was carefully detached, gazing at the several structures of her perfect body as themselves alone, separate forms, as if he were looking at a statue. But then something began to take hold of him, and he stopped work and asked if she would like something cold to drink. The afternoon was terribly hot. Even the air-conditioning was futile against the humidity. The glass of orange juice he poured for her sweated, and she loung
ed back on the divan, with her top pulled haphazardly over her, and talked about how she never dreamed she could love someone so much older. He thought he heard something faintly sardonic in her tone.
“You’re tall and broad shouldered.” She sipped the orange juice. “My little boy’s father’s like you.”
“Where’s he?”
She shrugged. “Gone off.” Her shoulders made him think about shoulders as a feature. He had the thought that what he felt now was of the province of fantasy and cliché.
“He ever see his son?”
“Doesn’t know about him. Wouldn’t care if he did.”
“I would,” Shumaker said.
“Well, you’re different.”
“Sounds like he’s different. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t want to see his own son.”
“Okay. He’s different.”
“So where’s he gone off to?”
Again, she shrugged. “Somewhere out west, I guess. Pacific Northwest, last I heard. He grew a big white beard and looks like Jerry Garcia now. Last time I saw him anyway.” Her lips curled slightly at the corners. He thought of kissing them. It wasn’t an urge to kiss her, but a sense of the luscious ripe softness of the mouth.
He said, “My mother used to say that about me being broad shouldered. Like it’s a good thing.”
“Oh, it’s a very good thing.”
“I never could see myself as being any different than other guys, though.” Suddenly, without premeditation, his whole mind was fixed on saying the right things to make her come to him.
She looked straight at him. “I think you’re very attractive. I like your eyes.”
“Nothing like how beautiful yours are.”
“Your irises don’t touch the bottom lids. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”
“They don’t—I never noticed that.” He felt stupid.
“Buddy says he’s sure I’ll probably take up with other men after we’re married.”
“He does.” The tremulousness of his own voice surprised and embarrassed him. Breathing had become a question of getting the air out of his chest. It seemed to be gathering just under his neck.
“I think he means to tempt me, really. See how far I’ll go.”
Shumaker waited.
“Wanna see how far I’ll go?”
IV
What followed was unlike anything he had ever experienced or dreamed. When at last it was over and they lay breathing and sighing, he said, “You can’t marry Lessing. My God.”
She smiled, turned, and offered herself for a kiss.
And he was aware of kissing her now, not just those lips. He grasped her by the shoulders. “I mean it,” he said again. “You can’t marry Lessing.”
“Don’t be absurd.” She giggled, almost inaudibly.
He let go and simply lay there for a moment. “But—God. Don’t do it.”
“He’s very nice, you know.” But she was starting again, kissing his chest.
“Say you won’t,” he said.
“Okay,” she murmured, and licked down his abdomen.
—
HE SAW HER four more times that week. The painting, the use of the oils, began as a blur. Twice he started over. At the end of each sitting, there would be another session on the divan, turns and refinements that would give him fever dreams in the night. She told him of her loves, the travels she had done, how it was that she took up with Lessing. None of it made any difference. None of it quite sank in. The sound of her voice quelled all the agitations of his mind.
“You’re actually gonna marry Lessing?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been putting him off awhile now.”
“I have to make some headway with this painting.”
“We’ll play around, and he travels a lot.”
“But you don’t understand. I’m in love.”
She leaned into him, pressing her lips to the side of his neck. Then: “I feel exactly the same. Isn’t it amazing.”
—
SONYA CALLED EARLY the next week to say that her parents wanted to come with her when she returned from LA.
For an instant, he could not speak.
“They think the whole family should get together. They’ve decided to try and make the best of me living in Memphis.”
“So they’re—”
“They think they’re coming with me. Yes.”
“I—well, I don’t think they should spend the money.”
“I don’t care about the money. I’d rather they stay home.”
“You can’t get them to stay home?” He almost told her everything.
“I’m going to pitch a fit and see if I can make them put it off.”
“That’s probably best.”
After a beat, she said, “Do you miss me?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“You sound funny.”
He listened for whatever else she might make of things.
“You haven’t met someone else, have you?” she asked, clearly teasing.
“Have you?” He hoped she had.
“I love you,” she said.
Nearly choking on the very air, he said, “Me, too. You.”
He drove downtown, to Automatic Slim’s, and sat outside on the sidewalk. Two couples were there who knew each other. Normal people having a good time, leading calm, uncomplicated lives. He drank a whiskey, then walked up to the top of Union, and looked out at the river and the bridge to Arkansas.
—
HE COULD NOT SLEEP, think, eat, be with anybody else. He spent hours with the painting after she’d gone, sometimes just sitting, staring at her face, the face he had painted. He knew almost nothing about her. She had a child in New Orleans. She was from there, but lived for a long time in Little Rock. Her father died before she was old enough to remember him. There were no brothers or sisters. She had lived with her mother in Little Rock, and they’d had a falling-out over her relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. She said the word boyfriend and then smirked. “Boyfriend sounds so juvenile. I use beau. The first part of the word beauty, right? Just add the t and y.”
“You had a relationship with your mother’s boyfriend?”
“Beau.”
“Okay, beau.”
She looked at her bitten nails, and her eyelids came down slightly over those eyes. “A brief one.”
“How did you meet Lessing?”
“Let’s not talk anymore.”
“Please,” he said.
“I met him one afternoon. I was walking along Beale Street, looking in the clubs. Broad daylight, and there he was sitting outside the King’s Palace Café, smoking a big cigar. First thing he said to me was ‘You’re exquisite.’ Just like that. I said, ‘Thanks.’ And he said, ‘Young lady, I have a lot of money and I’d like to show you a good time.’ It was so frank and appealing, you know? And I had no money left, I was out of a job. Actually I was thinking of panhandling.”
“What was your job before?”
She considered, but she was still thinking about Lessing. “We’re a lot alike, actually. I do have fun with him. He’s eighty-three and for him it’s all one big game. That’s how he thinks of it. A great fun exciting game, and he even calls it that. Everything’s just gaming. From one thing to the next. He does what he wants and he sees who he wants and spends what he wants.”
“He’s eighty-three,” Shumaker said. “It’s grotesque that you’re with him.”
“Don’t talk like that. Why do you want to ruin everything like that.” She seemed about to cry. “People shouldn’t say mean things like that. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not with him just for the money.”
“Maybe I was at first.” Her tone now was defiant.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Shumaker said. “Please forgive me.”
“Here you are with this beautiful gift, young and strong and pretty, and you have to talk like that about a man you don’t know.”
“Forgi
ve me. Please.” He put his arms around her. “Please, I’m in love with you. I’m just jealous. It’s just jealousy talking.”
They were quiet, then, for a very long while. She fell asleep in his arms. He lay there watching the light move to the other side of the window in the door. His arm hurt. But he kept still, and at last she woke up, yawning, and again he asked for her forgiveness.
—
HE STARTED GETTING THINGS WRONG at the restaurant. He couldn’t make eye contact the way he used to. He led people to unset tables, forgot menus, got orders wrong, and one night he spilled hot coffee in a man’s lap. The thick folded napkin there saved the man from being badly burned. His uncle had spoken to his father, and so of course his uncle knew about Alexa.
“You can’t keep messing up like this.”
“I know.” They were in the men’s room. Shumaker’s hands shook pulling a paper towel from the dispenser. “I’ll do better.”
“Why don’t you bring the girl here?”
His mind was blank.
“You ashamed of us or something? Why hasn’t she been to meet your parents, for that matter.”
“I’m—I’m painting her. That’s the only time I see her.”
“You don’t ask her out for a date? This girl you’re ass over elbows in love with?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, you’re a grown man and all that. Your business, but this place is my business, and if you keep messing up, I’m going to have to find somebody else.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me, for Christ’s sake. I’m your uncle.”
“Yes, s—yes.”
The next afternoon, at the appointed time, after they had set up and he had tried again with the painting and found that his hands shook too badly to make much progress at all, he went to the divan and sat next to her.
“Well?” she said. “What do you want to do now, lover?” She leaned toward him.
“Come out with me. I want you to meet the family. We could have dinner at my parents’ house.”
Kissing the side of his face, she said, “I’m occupied in the evenings. You know that.”
“You can’t get away for one evening?”
Now she stopped, and shook her head. “He’s been good to me.”
“But you said we could see each other and—”
“I know what I said. Oh, baby. Let’s not talk about it now.” She put her hands in his hair.
Living in the Weather of the World Page 13
